


I Don't Know How You Got Into Me

by quinncest



Category: Bandom, Pierce the Veil
Genre: M/M, Panic Attacks, Victony, hints of mentions of past self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 03:31:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1729559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quinncest/pseuds/quinncest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony loving and Vic not understanding for half a decade. [Vic and Tony through the years. Mostly on tour.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Know How You Got Into Me

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: The world needs more Vic/Tony. So I spent a month writing some, I'm so ashamed, I've never done this before okay, please don't look at me. Anyways, this is fiction in every sense of the word, the touring history is all messed up, the non-touring history is all messed up, and I'm sure the blowjob history is all messed up compared to what is actually going on. Proceed with caution.

  
The first time he meets Tony, he can’t bring himself to consider him anything but a kid, despite him only being four years younger, but he’s still straddling the line between legal drinking age and statutory rape victim for god’s sake. And it’s the second thing leaving Vic wondering what the kid’s doing at a party like this (the first being his seemingly aggressively introverted disposition).  
  
And then another kid with some hair (and he means some hair) is sidling up all bubbly next to Tony—he must be Jaime—and Vic’s question answers itself, and is instead replaced with where the hell did Mike even find these guys?  
  
x  
  
The first time Vic can recall Tony actually speaking a word to him without being spoken to first (and he’s going to be honest here, those first few weeks of “celebrating” how well the four of them clicked musically and that the band wasn’t falling apart were a little blurry, so he may not be the most reliable source) is about three weeks after the first time they meet and about two after Tony and Jaime officially join the band. Tony looks up at him from the pale flickering light pouring out of the TV screen and onto the otherwise dark basement floor. It has to be past four a.m. and the few people that were still going along with their long-term “party” are long gone, and Vic’s relatively sure that there’s vomit somewhere across the room, and there are so many beer bottles, and really all he’s thinking about is the fact that that means it’s probably time to stop celebrating and at this point he kind of hopes the other three agree with him.  
  
Tony looks up at him from the ground with a contorted-looking face (from the light or the alcohol, he’s not sure which), because Jaime’s far past asleep and Mike’s as good as with how high he is, and he half-mumbles half-slurs “do you think this will actually go anywhere.”  
  
And it’s not that he feels above the kid for having a whopping two years of experience on him, not that he feels better than him because he just looks like so much of a kid, is still enough of one to be contained in that phase of snake bites and falling apart after tons of Mike’s secondhand smoke and four Coronas, but maybe it’s the naivety of it all that lets the laugh break its way out of him (or again, maybe it’s just the alcohol).  
  
And he doesn’t really have an answer. Isn’t going to jinx it with a “yes,” and isn’t willing to go into how approximately one in a few hundred bands manage to even make it on a single headlining tour, not when Tony’s finally opened his mouth and not when between the two sections that he divides the world into of people he’s close enough to be honest and a dick to and people he likes and doesn’t want to offend, Tony’s yet to make it into the former.  
  
“I really fucking hope so, because I don’t know what person in their right mind is going to hire Mike.”  
  
And Tony sleepily laughs back.  
  
x  
  
It’s their first offer of a show that gives them the realization that they’re probably going to need a new name. They end up sitting around stumped for a while, like this was the last part to cross their mind, Mike giggling about the fact that they actually accepted a gig, damn near released their first album, before falling silent when the woman from the venue up north asks for a name, if it was still Before Today.  
  
They’re all still sitting around his tiny ass apartment in the San Diego “winter,” Jaime hogging all the blankets Vic owns in his chair off to the left side of the room. Mike and Tony are on the couch, Mike’s feet tucked under his thighs (“why don’t you just wear pants bro?”), and Vic in front of them all on his hard wood floor, almost dropping the phone in surprise when she questions a “hello?” almost a full minute later.  
  
“Pierce the Veil,” the words come out before he can think about them, and the girl thanks him, hanging up.  
  
“Sorry, it just kind of came out.”  
  
“Well they were bugging me for us to give them a fucking name to put on the album. Probably should’ve brought it up,” Mike speaks from his side of Vic’s couch.  
  
Jaime looks back at him from Mike, “what the hell does Pierce the Veil mean?”  
  
“It’s um...it was the title of one of our songs. You know, Before. I took this class in college...basically, it means taking something you don’t like in your life or wherever, something that’s hurting you, and cutting it out from the source.”  
  
“So we’re taking away all the bad?” Tony questions from beside Mike.  
  
“Yeah, I mean...if you guys want to be...I can call her back if you don’t.”  
  
Tony snorts. “Seems kind of pretentious, doesn’t it?”  
  
x  
  
The first time the four of them perform live together, it’s at this weird hipster club barely outside Oregon, and he kind of wonders who thought they’d fit here, but it’s not like any of them are about to turn down any gigs. It’s a few days after A Flair For the Dramatic is released, something Vic and Mike mostly wrote (and even partially recorded) before Jaime and Tony came around, and it’s selling about as well as they’d expected.  
  
The band they open for tries to climb up the chandeliers and throw themselves off stage about three too many times, but there’s something endearing about the band members being more into themselves than the actual audience. They have a gorgeous bassist and she wishes each of them luck five or six times, and sometimes now Vic wonders if they’re still around and if they’re as out of it as they were back then.  
  
He steps out on stage before realizing that half of the current company haven’t done this before, not outside of a basement at least. And Tony looks like he’s about to flee or cry or spontaneously combust.  
  
There can’t be more than thirty, maybe forty people tops, and he starts strumming, back before he really understood the concept of talking to the crowd. They go directly into Drella and Tony appears to have enough sense still in him to pluck each note on auto-pilot. People mostly ignore them sans a group of drunken college students somewhere near Jaime’s side of the stage, cheering them on and singing along with words to a song that Vic is certain he never wrote, and both factors take the pressure off.  
  
He counts more mistakes on his part than Tony’s and Jaime seems perfectly at ease, albeit a little awkward in the way he always is. And he figures this will count as a success before tripping over a cord and later finding out that his guitar sprained his right wrist. People still don’t pay him much mind when he pulls himself up immediately and the college kids just scream louder.  
  
After the show, Jaime jokes that it’s a sign for their future and Mike tries to count off how many fingers he’s broken in the middle of shows.  
  
Tony just says he’s glad it wasn’t him like he thought it would be.  
  
Vic counts it as a success anyways.  
  
Later that night, after a quick trip to the hospital and meeting back outside the venue, the bassist gives him a kiss on the cheek and hands him the crumpled-up phone number of their drummer.  
  
“I know it’s pretty jank okay, I just can’t afford a phone right now. You guys were pretty incredible.”  
  
He smiles at her and leaves the paper in the backseat of their van after Mike elbows him and winks.  
  
When he wakes up a few hours later on the drive to the other three performances they have booked with an even smaller band than the last, he discovers it taped to the ceiling, and when did they make the time to stop for tape because he forgot to pack enough fucking socks man.  
  
Vic mostly ignores the slip of paper out of spite because he’s sick of his little brother trying to pick out girls for him. Come on, he’s twenty-three, and it’s not like he has any issues finding girls, Mike’s just excessive.  
  
He sleeps a lot on their mini-tour back down to San Diego. Jaime drives a lot because he has trouble sleeping in cars; Vic spends most of his time in back, and Mike and Tony alternate.  
  
Usually when he wakes up on Tony’s shoulder, he catches him staring up at the seemingly innocent piece of paper with an unreadable expression, and he wonders if it’s socially acceptable to give the number to someone else who wants it.  
  
x  
  
The first time he meets Tony’s girlfriend of two years, he’s surprised on several levels. The first of which being they’ve known each other for a little over two months and he’s never heard Tony so much as utter the word “girlfriend” (not that he utters much in the first place).  
  
It certainly makes Tony’s staring at the bassist’s number the whole way home more confusing.  
  
And it makes him realize that he still doesn’t really know these guys, that it all still has the potential to go horribly wrong.  
  
He pushes himself past the slight (arguably uncalled for) burst of betrayal relatively quickly when he finds out how sweet she is. She makes him want to go give away his apartment and everything he has and she makes him want to be as in love as she sounds.  
  
Vic ends up calling the bassist later that night and is answered by her drummer who tells him she’s already on a date. He’s guessing the guy disregards his request not to tell her that he called, because his phone rings at about midnight.  
  
“So, what, you like your bandmate’s girlfriend or something?”  
  
“No, no, I don’t think that’s it...” He’s pacing his kitchen rubbing his mostly-healed wrist.  
  
“No, she just makes you want to do selfless things and call girls in other states.”  
  
“Come on, Gandhi makes you want to do selfless things, that doesn’t mean everyone thinks he’s smokin’.”  
  
“So you called me at ten p.m. to tell me about this beautiful decedent of Gandhi after my shitty date?”  
  
He sighs.  
  
She giggles.  
  
“Calm down, Vic, you’re just a lonely, horny kid like the rest of us. Leave it to a lyricist to turn this into an existential crisis.”  
  
x  
  
He kind of wishes it were and existential crisis. He figures they make better songs than all the ones he already has about being a lonely, horny kid.  
  
x  
  
The first actual tour Pierce the Veil goes on is when they’re about ten months old. It’s Warped, and to this day Vic still struggles to determine whether that tour is a blessing or a curse.  
  
They travel in a van because they can’t afford a bus and it’s probably his biggest regret in his entire life. The people attending and participating in Warped make up for it, but only marginally. Four guys that go out and sweat all day plus a couple added “crew” members shoved into that tiny van? Not ideal. He figures that being relatively fine with each other and the smell after the first two or three weeks indicates that they won’t have to break up over the whole touring thing, because really he can’t imagine their circumstances being much worse than this in the future.  
  
Warped tour is where their first habits and traditions begin. Their warm-ups, learning that Jaime loves to leave his electronics everywhere and send himself into states of panic, and the two new editions get to see precisely too much of Mike’s naked body for any human being to ever get used to.  
  
He learns about how secluded Tony can make himself.  
  
He wanders off a lot. Says it’s normal. Says it’s the off weather in what’s supposed to be summer heat. It’s the lack of sleep.  
  
They don’t worry too much unless his girlfriend starts calling any of them up.  
  
Vic learns early on that Tony gravitates toward the water.  
  
“How’s it going, Tone?”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“You know, it’s supposed to start pouring soon, you uh...want to go back to the tents?”  
  
Tony shakes his head.  
  
“Tony, come on, you’re not going to sit out here in sixty degree rain okay? Let’s—“  
  
“She broke up with me.”  
  
The thing about Tony is that it’s always a whisper. He spends too much time speculating over whether the kid’s been damaged or if he’s always been this reserved, and if he'll ever know the answer, if he wants to know the answer.  
  
Vic doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know how to do this with him. They’ve never been in this position before and he hasn’t the slightest idea of the things Tony may or may not keep locked away in his head at any given moment.  
  
“Yeah, sorry, I...we don’t have to do this, you don’t have to sit here and—“  
  
“No.” Vic figures he’d rather learn sooner than later.  
  
He puts his arm around Tony’s shoulders, and yeah, that seems okay with the guitarist. The first time crying around someone new is always weird for both parties.  
  
The lake in front of them starts rippling, and Tony makes the slightest move towards Vic’s shoulder with his head, just brushes his dark hair against Vic’s hoodie, so yeah, this seems okay, and Vic idly wonders if their “guitar tech” said they were in Ohio or Wisconsin, because it all still just looks like Minnesota to him.  
  
It’s sure as hell cold enough to still be Minnesota.  
  
“Fuck, it’s like fucking hail.” And he’s right, because how can it be this cold mid-summer anywhere?  
  
Vic nods in response and neither move for a minute.  
  
He looks up and swears the rain drops are looking more white than they did a few seconds ago, that it’s not just him being dramatic, that there’s no way it’s sixty four degrees out here before sighing and leaning over to kiss Tony’s temple. And he’s not really sure why he does it, and judging by the slight stiffening of the other boy, maybe that wasn’t okay, but he figures it’s better not to say anything.  
  
He pushes himself up and reaches out to pull Tony and his chattering teeth with him.  
  
If he gets sick, he reasons that the rest of the band probably wouldn't hesitate to kick him out of their tiny-ass van to avoid catching it, and his summer plans don’t include being abandoned here in Wherever the Hell They Are.  
  
x  
  
Neither of them get sick, not from the cold (North Dakota, he notes) “summer” weather at least.  
  
They go out to as many bars as they can manage to pull Jaime and Tony into without question once they’re out of the Midwest and in a real city with real summer sun. (And god Vic never thought he’d spend a tour looking forward to Florida.)  
  
By New York, all the buses (and vans) are stopping in the city to shove the few underage band members among them into bars behind the backs of the biggest of them. Tony’s still sad, still doesn’t know what he did, but the other three are determined to force him into some too-loud club instead of leaving him in peace in their van like he knows Tony wishes they would.  
  
Four drinks in and Tony’s crawled his way away from them and back to the bar again.  
  
“Tony I don’t know why you’re so convinced this is your fault. Sometimes this shit just happens.”  
  
“There’s something wrong with me.”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with you!” It's a little slurred, and he thinks maybe he shouldn't be the one leading this conversation right now.  
  
Vic pulls on Tony’s hair and prods at him, tries to make him look at him.  
  
“I thought you were a giggly drunk.”  
  
“I could say the same for you.” And he swears Tony’s eyes flicker down when he pulls one of his piercings into his mouth.  
  
And so the first time they kiss is probably under some bad circumstances, and Vic will say his head wasn’t in it, will say it was a one man rebellion led against his brother for trying to hook him up with another girl that night when he’s perfectly capable.  
  
He won’t admit to the guilt he feels later for how vulnerable Tony was at the time.  
  
He moves slowly, tentatively, giving Tony time to move, to widen his eyes, to push him, yell, anything. But Tony just tilts his head a centimeter the way he did into his shoulder back at the lake and Vic presses forward, and it’s just slight movement, just a gentle press, and then Tony reaches out for his hip and reaches out for Vic’s bottom lip with his tongue, and then someone drops a glass, breaking them out of their buzzed trance, and it’s over, and the inner panic sets in.  
  
Because this is what breaks bands up, and they just fucking started, just found people that clicked.  
  
And Tony just looks at him with those same unreadable eyes that he looks at crumpled slips of paper with.  
  
x  
  
Vic calls the bassist from Oregon again that night.  
  
"Do you ever plan on calling during the daylight hours, or are you secretly a member of the undead?”  
  
“A member? What, is it like a club now, being undead?”  
  
He talks in gibberish, strings together words that don’t make sense, and she talks about her latest shitty date last week.  
  
He still sleeps on Tony’s shoulder the way he always does in the van that night.  
  
x  
  
They don’t talk about it.  
  
It’s not so much that he’s having a gay crisis or anything. I mean, sure he’s never really thought to have swung that way, but sexuality is fluid, and come on he grew up in California. No, it’s more about him worrying that acknowledging it will ruin the band or Tony or the natural placement of his features on his face or some combination of the three.  
  
They go on like normal for the rest of the tour. And it's not awkward, and he doesn't know what more he could ask for really.  
  
x  
  
When it ends, Tony spends more time sitting on Vic’s couch than he could’ve imagined possible. Really, if Tony told him he didn’t have a place to live anymore he wouldn’t be surprised. But it’s nice having someone with a longer attention span than Mike around to throw lyrics at.  
  
Tony’s still sad, still trying to fix some part of himself that isn’t wrong, and Vic can’t remember ever being this hung up on a girl. Doesn’t really understand or know what to do with him, so he mostly just talks constantly and orders movies about Star Wars off of Amazon.  
  
It helps to an extent.  
  
x  
  
Months pass. They play smaller venues around town. Vic writes until he can’t bend his fingers anymore. The words come fast, and then they come faster, they come to the point where he has to call up Mike because “Tony just fell asleep” to write them down for him because he physically cannot move his hand, and he doesn’t understand most of his own music recently. He just lets it flow out of him. Jaime migrates to his couch in an attempt to comfort Tony but really only ends up bringing more movies to the table. Mike’s always been squatting in his apartment every other night in an attempt to avoid getting his own.  
  
He deserves a trophy for not murdering all (or even one!) of them.  
  
Sometimes he calls up the bassist from Oregon and tries to decipher his own lyrics out loud at her. She tells him about a boy that came to their last show.  
  
Sometimes they switch to Jaime’s place because Vic’s appliances (and his neighbors’ appliances) tend to leak.  
  
Tony tells him to get a new apartment, that the sales from their first album, while not exactly something to write home about, have to be enough to upgrade to a place where the heater from the apartment above doesn’t drip boiling hot water on the floor long enough for it to start soaking through Vic’s ceiling, but he just feels like he doesn’t need one. He’s memorized all the spots that don’t creek on the wooden floors, likes that the walls are thick enough and how he still gets internet somehow even when the building’s power goes out. So he had to invest in a real bookshelf to get all his shit off the floor because sometimes it floods a few centimeters and his landlord has no idea what he’s doing. He likes it here, and he likes his neighbors (except for that girl down on the third floor), and that the sun rises into his window. And just thinking about cleaning the whopping 650 square foot space and moving all of his shit stresses him to no end.  
  
So when it floods every nine months or so, he deals.  
  
If you asked him to recount the events past the water welcoming itself into his “living room” from the floor above him that led him to this position in Jaime’s bathroom at three a.m., he wouldn’t have an answer for you.  
  
“Come on, you’ve shaved chunks of Mike’s hair off before, what’s the big deal?”  
  
“It’s not a big deal. I’m just trying to warn you that you’re going to look fucking hilarious if you leave this job to me.”  
  
Tony shoves the clippers into his hands.  
  
“Okay, fine, you’re gonna have to live with children pointing at you for weeks, not me.”  
  
Tony sits on the little wooden stool and Vic starts from the back. He tries to grasp back onto the theory he had of this being a method of Tony forgiving himself or his ex and Vic isn’t sure if his failure lies in how tired he is now or how tired he was when he first thought it up. Either way, he thinks it points to yet another reason he shouldn’t be responsible for someone else’s appearance (short term or otherwise) right now.  
  
Tony’s long, dark hair slips through his fingers and Jaime will still be finding it in little crevices in the tiles months from now.  
  
“I get what you meant about Mike forcing girls upon you now."  
  
"Yeah...it's his idea of "helping." Hey, stop moving, you're gonna make it even worse."  
  
"I know, but I mean, drunk girls at random bars? Does he really think that'll work?"  
  
"I guess so. Seems to work for him. He probably figures everyone else's relationship coping mechanisms are the same or something."  
  
"I don't see how more girls will fix my girl problems."  
  
"You could tell him that."  
  
"He'd probably just take that as me asking for dudes instead."  
  
His hand almost slips. "Don't make me laugh while I've got sharp objects near your head, dumbass!"  
  
Tony just laughs a little. Vic carefully runs the blade through the sides of Tony's hair. The clock in the bathroom ticks past 3:17 a.m. and all you can hear are the clippers and Tony's nervous humming. He works his way to the front of Tony's head and nudges Tony's knee to the side to stand in between his legs and did Tony blush or is he going crazy?  
  
After some time, he puts the buzzers down and runs his fingers through Tony's hair to get rid of the stray pieces, and Tony kind of relaxes into it, and okay, maybe he didn't do all that bad. Tony stands up and offers Vic a small smile through the mirror.  
  
x  
  
The first time Tony mentions another girl to him is immediately after the release of Selfish Machines. He's twenty-one and they don't have to sneak him into bars anymore.  
  
He says she works at a cafe down on Grand, says he doesn't know how to talk to people and that they're leaving for tour in another week anyways, and Mike drags him right back down there and leaves Tony's number when he refuses to.  
  
If you inquired as to where the songs of Selfish Machines came from, nobody would know what to speak up with for sure.  
  
Vic's had to shave the sides of Tony's head several times since the first, and he's not sure why he's been assigned the job, but he's positive he's getting good at it and that he should start charging.  
  
The girl from the cafe texts Tony a lot, but it doesn't go much farther than that. It appears to disappoint the rest of the band more than Tony himself.  
  
x  
  
The bassist calls him screaming about hearing him over the speakers at a record store and "how could you not tell me you guys released a new album!" two days into tour.  
  
She calls him every time she finds Selfish Machines or an advertisement for it anywhere.  
  
He calls her when they start filming music videos.  
  
x  
  
Vic doesn't experience one of Tony's panic attacks until the start of this tour.  
  
They're in New Mexico opening for Bring Me the Horizon, which, might he add, is pretty fucking incredible, and this may be their biggest crowd yet. They all make the mistake of letting Tony peak out when Miss May I are still on.  
  
Vic remembers reading online that most panic attacks are actually the result of feeling alone or experiencing sudden change, but this one seems almost immediate, and he's pretty sure that's not what's going on here.  
  
And he has no experience in this field. Sure, he's consoled hundreds of upset teenage girls, but Tony looks like he's about to run, try to disappear into the sea like he imagines he always wants to. So he looks at an equally concerned Jaime before handing Tony's guitar off to one of the techs and pulling him down the hall to their dressing room.  
  
He forces him to sit and goes to get him water. By the time he's back, Tony's breathing is heavy and his knees are up to his chest and he looks like he's just seen a fucking ghost. Vic would be lying if he said he hadn't spent a night or two awake researching and preparing for this the moment Mike told him about the anxiety.  
  
"Hey, hey, hey, hey, it's okay, you're going to be okay." He puts the cup on the table next to the couch they're sitting on, reaching out to grab the hands Tony has fisted in his hair until his knuckles are white.  
  
The panicked boy tries to return them to his head, no doubt to be able to grab harder without having to worry about hurting anyone but himself, and Vic keeps reaching out.  
  
"Hey, you can grab as hard as you want okay? Don't curl into yourself, come on, I'm here, I'm right here, and this is all gonna be over in like ten minutes, okay? You're okay." He really hopes he's saying the right things, that he's not just making things worse. He remembers reading about a thousand times never to hold or restrain someone when they're falling apart like this, so he isn't really sure what to do when Tony grabs him first. Settling for lightly wrapping his arms around the other boy, a stance making itself easy enough to break out of at any given moment with no bout of strength required, he starts humming into Tony's ear, and eventually his breathing begins to even back out.  
  
They end up sitting there until their manager comes rapping on the door, telling them they've got three minutes to get on stage, and he looks down at Tony for approval before standing.  
  
"Are you sure you want to like...do this?"  
  
He isn't sure if he's asking about the show or the shows to come, but he gets a reassuring smile and an embarrassed look before Tony nods. And he'll take it.  
  
x  
  
Less than a week before the end of tour, they manage to pile almost half the bands and crews touring with them onto their bus. (Did he mention how happy he is that they've got a bus?) Miss May I's crew brings a fortune's worth of vodka and Vic hasn't been this out of it in a while. It's common knowledge among most of the bands (and thankfully not so much to the rest of the world) that a very drunk Vic is a very touchy Vic. Tonight's no exception.  
  
He spends the night crawling all over his friends, giggling, draping himself across people, etc. It'd be obnoxious if everyone didn't find it so hilariously uncharacteristic.  
  
He's leaning on Jaime's shoulder and mumbling incoherently and squeezing his arms (his drunk self seemingly has a strange fascination with them, please don't make fun of him). Jaime's ignoring him completely in favor of talking to the more conscious friends on their bus.  
  
Jaime pushes Vic off of himself to go see if there's any Jameson left and Vic takes a moment to give him an indignant glare before crossing the bus to climb into Tony's lap.  
  
"Why d'you think pirates didn' jus use horses?"  
  
It seems like a perfectly educated question, but Tony's just laughing uncontrollably and he doesn't really understand why.  
  
"Cowboys," he whispers to himself. Tony keeps laughing.  
  
His friend tries to push him off, but Vic decides he's not having that again and pushes Tony's shoulders back into the seat cushions and buries his face there, making himself more comfortable by straddling the other's hips.  
  
The guitarist whines and he growls right back.  
  
He wants to take a nap right here and he actually feels himself drift for a moment but then everything's so loud again and he makes his displeasure known by digging his teeth into whatever's being pushed into his face. Which he realizes is Tony's shoulder. Oh. Wow, he's out of it. Tony pushes his head away with a yelp and Vic holds on tighter.  
  
"'m sorr," he slurs and licks the spot in an apology, and Tony freezes, and drunk Vic must decide he likes that, because he repeats the process closer to the other's neck. He's sure he'd have been pushed on the floor again by now if Tony weren't just about, if not as out of his mind as he is.  
  
He looks up at Tony before connecting their lips and sliding his fingers into his (so wonderfully cut and shaved, god Vic deserves an award) hair, and he decides he likes this better without the snake bites; they were so cold. He nips at Tony's bottom lip and oh, that was a nice noise. He licks his way into his mouth and grinds his hips down exactly once before he's on the ground again. He watches Tony roll his eyes at him as he gets up for another drink and considers not pushing so many boundaries before getting distracted and walking over to sit on Levi and yelling about "what happened to all the vodka," playing with the boy's hair.  
  
x  
  
The next day they give a really incredible performance. They're in Seattle and it's not freezing and god knows Vic appreciates that. Tony looks relaxed and Vic doesn't forget any of his lyrics and Mike is flawless as usual. The crowd is one of the loudest they've ever had. Nobody falls over or breaks any fingers and it's really all Vic needs. Jaime screams and jumps all over the fucking stage and nothing is out of tune and all the kids look so happy and it reminds him why this is so fucking worth it.  
  
He's learned to talk to the crowd, giving his nth speech about how thankful they are for their fans, how much he loves his band, he catches Tony smiling at the ground, and he has rough nights wondering why he's here, and god he loves having these moments that answer that for him.  
  
Needless to say, it's a good day.  
  
They get off stage and right around the corner he finds the bassist from Oregon, who's immediately on top of him.  
  
"You haven't called me in almost a month, asshole!"  
  
She lets go of him before grabbing his face and giving his cheek a dramatic kiss ("muah" sound and all).  
  
"Well sorry, it's not like you called either."  
  
"No excuse, Fuentes."  
  
Her whole band is here, and they sit around just outside the venue together, talking to the fans that come up once in a while (and if he's being honest, Pierce the Veil probably aren't recognized as much as their Portlandian friends. They've still only got half hour sets after all).  
  
They're getting ready to leave at around midnight when she pulls Vic behind everyone.  
  
"So why didn't you just tell me?"  
  
He lifts an eyebrow. "...Tell you...what?"  
  
"That you like him. I feel like I could've given you better advice, you know?"  
  
"What are you talking about? Like who?"  
  
She furrows her eyebrows, looking about as confused as he feels. "Tony." And, um. What?  
  
He laughs a little. "You're...you're kidding right?"  
  
"Oh...sorry. I-"  
  
"This is because of the hair isn't it?"  
  
"...Actually it was more Mike's mentioning you drunkenly kissing him."  
  
"Oh."  
  
She gives him an evil smirk.  
  
He groans. "God, look, I don't like to share this with the world, but I get a little...touchy when I've had a few too many, okay?"  
  
She slings an arm around his shoulders and starts walking to catch up with the rest of their friends. "You know, alcohol just gives people the balls to do what they're too afraid to do sober."  
  
He rolls his eyes and shoves her into a nearby wall.  
  
"That may have shut me up if you had more muscle mass than a chihuahua!"  
  
"Then why're you running!"  
  
x  
  
They return to their bus exhausted that night, and Mike slips in a movie while Vic slips across Tony's and his brother's legs. He's almost asleep before Tony's lifting up his torso to crawl his way out from beneath him, and Vic's whining, and everyone else is telling him to go to his bunk.  
  
He's relatively sure he falls asleep somewhere around the southern border of Washington to the sound of Tony's near-nonexistent humming, thanking any higher being that they've got another hotel night tomorrow.  
  
x  
  
They have to drive all the way past San Diego into Nevada before ending the tour in their hometown, and it ends up being another low night. They've all been up for too long and Vic knows they aren't as much fun this close to the end of tour, this close to home and their own beds.  
  
But hotels help. They're significantly more comfortable than their bunks, and they supply more room for a night.  
  
The four of them talk to masses of people until Vic feels as if he'll collapse, at which point they stumble back to the hotel, and Vic opts to room with Tony because he knows Jamie's sleeping's been getting worse again, and god knows he can sleep through snoring a hell of a lot better than Jaime.  
  
They grab their room keys and he and Tony head up to the twelfth floor. After a couple of sleepy attempts to pull the key out in time with the green light, Tony takes the card from him before succeeding himself on the second try. Show off. Tony walks in to flip on a lamp before his eyes land on the single king-sized mattress and then travel back over to Vic, still standing in the doorway.  
  
Vic looks back with eyes that won't stop fluttering shut, a silent agreement that he is also way too fucking tired to go down and complain for their two queens.  
  
He pushes himself into the room, throwing his hat and jeans onto the carpet next to his bag and climbing into the side of the bed closest to the window.  
  
He looks up after a moment to see Tony awkwardly staring at his feet. He groans. "Tony, come on, we've slept in the same bed before what's the deal?"  
  
He watches Tony duck his head further and with a sigh of defeat, discard his pants into the same corner as Vic's before crawling in and trying not to get too close. Which Vic finds strange considering their recent physical history.  
  
They lie that way in silence for a few minutes.  
  
"Tone, you're gonna fall off the fucking bed."  
  
He huffs at the lack of response, knowing that the other boy isn't asleep. He grabs Tony's right shoulder and twists him around, pulling him further into the bed. And if he weren't so exhausted, he'd tease the tall tattooed man for the squeak that comes out of him, but instead he pushes Tony's arm down and forces his own head onto his shoulder, dropping his hand onto Tony's stomach. Because damn it, they're almost three years into this and it's beyond time to get comfortable with each other, and he'll be damned if any of them waste a precious hotel night on the floor.  
  
The first time they're this close sober is only weird for one of them because the other is determined to keep it otherwise.  
  
x  
  
Inevitably, because Vic's never had luck with people and his life was going too smoothly, things don't actually get weird until they get home. Their last show is wonderful, because they pour everything they have left into it, because he just feels like screaming until he can fucking sleep again (i.e. because there's been too much Monster consumption on this past tour).  
  
It's after the show, when they're celebrating their homecoming (and honestly, sometimes he worries that "celebrating" could turn into "alcoholism" considering the line of work he's in). They're in a friend's basement; he's having trouble remembering if it's Tom's or Nick's...or maybe Alice's? This couch feels like hers...  
  
The point is that they're in a friend's basement and Oli and his band have already left to fly home and Mike's been giggling on his shoulder for about a half hour, and he's been staring blankly at the crowd of people moving in front of him, idly wondering how he could gain more physical contact and how many people would willingly kiss him, before he sees Tony attempting to climb the stairs without, you know, using the actual stairs. And then his mind wanders into what it could be about the guy that gives him the urge to climb when he's plowed, and that it's easy enough to say that he should definitely be supervised, seeing as Vic can still spot the scratches all over his left arm from last time all the way from his couch at the other side of the room.  
  
So he gets up to do exactly that, supervise, Mike still laughing alone in the background.  
  
"Tony, get down."  
  
"You can't tell me what to do, you don't own the sky." Alice is laughing next to him, and it's just not helping.  
  
"You're not in the sky Tony, you're in someone's house."  
  
There's a yelp where Tony topples about five feet. He sighs and looks down at him, trying to give the impression that he doesn't see the room spinning right now.  
  
He grabs Tony's arm as the other stands up and immediately starts trying to grab onto the railing again, pulling him as far away from it as possible.  
He's about to start lecturing him when suddenly he's against a wall and Tony's lips are on his and at that point he's kind of over whatever he was talking about because a drunken Vic provided with physical contact is a happy Vic. Tony's fingers are pressing onto his bony hips and he's nibbling at his bottom lip, and before he can really acknowledge what's happening in his intoxicated state, he's letting out a low moan, and Tony's tongue dives into his mouth, and yeah, okay, he'll finally admit that the younger is pretty fucking good at this.  
  
Vic pushes back, sucks on Tony's tongue, scratches at the back of his neck. And the next thing he knows, Tony's pulling away and he almost yells at him before he feels something soft on the base of his neck, so he just leans his head to the side and whines. Tony sucks on a spot right below Vic's ear, and that does things to him, things that make his hips stutter forward and pull a strangled noise that he didn't know he was keeping in from the back of his throat. Tony makes a similar (although admittedly more controlled) sound and grinds Vic's hips back into the wall, and wow this is going incredible places. The guitarist brings his mouth back up to Vic's and Vic immediately pulls his lip in between his teeth, and it seems like Tony's just playing a one man game of How Close Is It Physically Possible To Get Before Breaking Through the Other Side of the Wall.  
  
Somewhere between autopilot and sheer will on his dick's part, Vic maneuvers them into the bathroom down the hall, and pushes Tony against the door as he closes it, crashing back into the boy. In the same span of a matter of seconds, his position is reversed so he's backed into the door, and Tony's moving their pelvises together, and god suddenly he feels like he hasn't gotten off since fucking Jersey. Tony groans into his shoulder, and then there's a hand unbuttoning his jeans, and fuck he really needs to reconsider his sexuality because he can't remember the last time he ended up this hard in less than ten minutes.  
  
Tony looks up at him, either for permission or to see if Vic's going to be okay because he's relatively sure that his face is two shades redder than usual, what with the alcohol and the hands and all. He can only bring himself to give another whine, and that seems to be enough for his friend, who goes on to pull his cock out of Vic's pants, spitting on his other hand, and then there's this friction, and all he can think about is back in high school, when Mike was trying to convince him that dudes would definitely give better handjobs considering they had dicks of their own, and maybe it's just Tony, or maybe he owes his brother a huge apology for not listening sooner.  
  
That train of thought goes on for a whopping thirty seconds before he feels something wet, and then he's opening his eyes, and Tony's looking back up from his knees, and seriously? This guy seemed incredibly straight all these years and now he's swirling his tongue around the tip of Vic's dick and he's wondering if this has happened before, and that is another amazing thought. Tony presses forward, sounding a moan whose vibrations go right up his spine. He grabs Tony's hair (he should probably give it a trim and a buzz soon, but hey, they've been on tour), and tries to stay relatively quiet, not wanting anyone to know that he's defiling most-likely-Alice's bathroom.  
  
Tony's head is bobbing and Vic's grasping the side of the counter, not wanting to rip out Tony's hair, and he feels that warmth in the bottom of his stomach. He starts pulling, "Tony, seriously, get off, I'm gonna..."  
  
There's a pop (and a whimper on Vic's part) followed by Tony's heavy breathing, but he just gives Vic a glare for pulling him off, returning to his spot in between the elder's legs, sucking harder, running his fist up the shaft he can't reach, and then Vic's moaning, and Tony swallows around him. Very hard. And shit, he never knew that simple gesture of slight overstimulation felt that good.  
  
Tony stands and they're both panting, Vic reaching forward to pull him into another kiss.  
  
His hands wander out towards Tony's belt, wanting to return the favor, and there's a knock at the door, which Vic is perfectly happy and prepared to ignore, but then Tony gets that same fucking look, and he's getting sick of not knowing what it means, all if which he's totally ready to tell Tony (after tending to the problem in his pants, that is), but then he's half running out the door, and Vic's extremely confused.  
  
There's a guy standing outside the doorway looking equally confused. Vic goes searching, finding Jaime instead, who (quite drunkenly) informs him that Tony said he was going home.  
  
He feels like he should be more worried about the band's fate than Tony's, but he can't exactly seem to control himself on that one.  
  
And it's the first time Tony doesn't answer his phone calls.  
  
x  
  
They don't talk for two weeks. Jaime and Mike don't really know what's going on, but it's hard to pass off not seeing a band member for that long as normal. He tries to act like he doesn't know what's up either.  
  
When they do talk again, it's nearly midnight on a Thursday. Vic's sitting in his living room desperately trying and failing to write, and he hears a knock at his door before it opens on its own.  
  
"You should start locking that. Creepy tattooed men could walk in in the middle of the night requesting haircuts."  
  
He sets his guitar to the side and turns around in his seat to face the chipping paint around his door frame. "What, not even a “hi?” Just waltz in demanding I groom you?"  
  
The boy in the doorway snorts. "...I brought Jaime's clippers?"  
  
Vic smiles up at him, relief washing over him, and he thinks about demanding an apology, but he figures that might make things awkward. He looks at him a moment too long and drops his eyes to the floor.  
  
He hears the door finally click shut. "Is it just me, or does your apartment actually look worse than when we left?"  
  
"Shut up you dick, come on."  
  
Tony follows him to the bathroom, where he sits on the side of the bathtub, and Vic pulls the scissors out from the top left cabinet. The fluorescent light shines onto the off-white porcelain, doing the apartment even less justice than the sunlight, which Tony didn't think was really possible. Vic's learned since the first time to start from the front, to cut between the pointer and middle fingers, put your hand down where you're buzzing the hair, etc.  
  
Tony isn't humming like he usually is, and it's quiet enough to hear his neighbors yelling upstairs. He's used to it.  
  
He works with it, wonders if anyone's ever wanted to write a song about this, thinks it's odd that he's compelled to. That the sight of his band mate's hair being chopped away in the sickly light of his shitty apartment makes him want to write songs that he's been trying to compose for weeks. He tries not to read too much into it.  
  
He pushes the clippers back a final time, using his left hand as a guide, and runs his fingers through Tony's hair, searching for longer spots he missed, and Tony's eyes are slipping closed. He puts the scissors down and flicks Tony's forehead, the younger's eyes opening with a glare. "Hey now."  
  
"I've decided to start charging," he says, leaning back against the counter. Tony stands to look in the mirror, leaning his hip on the sink next to Vic.  
  
"Oh yeah? How much?"  
  
He tilts his head to look at Tony, smirk slowly fading from his face, eyes softening. Tony leans forward, and Vic leans back.  
  
"Is this going to end in you running home again?"  
  
Tony sighs and leans away, ducks his head, embarrassed. "I...I'm sorry about that...I don't really know why I..."  
  
Vic moves a centimeter closer, but it goes unnoticed.  
  
"I should go." Tony starts pushing himself away from the counter, and Vic steps out in front of him.  
  
"No, come on, I'm sorry, let's...not do this again. Please?"  
  
Tony looks down at him. And Vic leans forward, unintentionally. But Tony leans too, and his hands reach out as Tony's reach down. Their lips brush, and it's all soft and warm and slow. Tony leans their foreheads together and Vic clutches the front of his shirt. And it should be stranger than it is.  
  
x  
  
They have another tour booked in a week, solely for Selfish Machines, and to say the idea of headlining makes him want to roll into the middle of the road and throw up would be an understatement. He's relatively terrified to say the least.  
  
He keeps trying to write, gets more and more frustrated with himself until he gives up completely because the last album was the easiest thing he's ever created and he still has no idea where any of it came from, and now he's just...stuck.  
  
They end up leaving for tour before he can manage to pull a single word out of himself, and he's thankful to have it as an excuse to not focus so hard on getting anything out. He ends up with a bottom bunk, which is still better than a top bunk, but not as good as the middle he prefers. On the bright side, it's easier to climb into drunk.  
  
He feels high off of it all.  
  
Their first show is in Oregon, because that's just the way it always seems to go. He tells the bassist, but she doesn't show up, which is kind of a bummer, but he tries not to read too much into it.  
  
He opts out of most of the "after parties" in favor of trying to write. He feels the words scrambled up with the notes crawling around in his flesh like he's a drug addict, but they just don't sound right, don't come out in any order that makes sense, and it upsets him to a place beyond sleep and food.  
  
x  
  
They don't even manage to reach Michigan before every look he's being spared is full of concern, and he's pretty much ready for that to stop at any time now. It gets to the point where their tour manager starts slipping sleeping meds into his food, which upon discovery, he does not appreciate. And it's not like he's sleeping any less than Jaime on his insomnia kicks, but he later reasons that maybe it's the fact that he doesn't handle it all quite as well as Jaime.  
  
He's sitting in the back of the bus one night, on the floor leaning against the seats, destroyed notebook to his right, guitar in his lap, and angry expression on his face, when Tony walks in, eyes barely open.  
  
"Vic, it's six a.m. Have you slept at all?"  
  
He doesn't look up from his fingers on the frets, muttering a "don't ask stupid questions."  
  
Tony sits to his left and pulls his hand away from the neck of his acoustic, twists his palm up, and repeatedly ghosts his fingernails up and down his hand.  
  
"What are you doing, I'm trying to write."  
  
"It's how my mom got me to sleep when I was little. I'd start crying if she stopped touching me."  
  
Vic just looks down at Tony's fingers in a trance, exhaustion beginning to get the better of him, and Tony starts humming, and he wants to ask him to sing but A) he's sure that he'd say no and B) it feels like such a chore to move his mouth this week. And he forgot how warm other people are.  
  
Tony starts talking to him about water, and he's not really grasping any of it, is too tired to, and within the Pandora's box of things he doesn't understand about Tony Perry lies the boy's fixation with the element. It sits in the pile of concepts right underneath that look on his face. But he can't say that he minds, because this touching thing feels so good in the most innocent way possible. It's strange. But so is Tony. So.  
  
He zones back in to his friend talking about falling into the ocean when he was two, and if anything that convinces him that the fixation should be more of a fear, but maybe he just doesn't get people. Maybe it's not just Tony, maybe it's him.  
  
He ends up slumping when Tony's fingers trace up into the crook of his elbow, leaning in towards the younger boy, eyes fluttering shut.  
  
He stirs when he feels himself being picked up, whines in protest, and is immediately shushed, so he lets himself fall asleep.  
  
x  
  
He wishes nothing more than to say the insomnia stopped with light touches and talking, but alas, it lives on with his writer's block.  
  
He knows this tour's been hell for everyone because of him, and he feels awful about it, he really does, but he doesn't really know what to do with himself. He tried taking up smoking for a while before realizing that it just woke him up more and made him feel sick. And he feels like it would help if he could figure out what the fuck was causing it in the first place, but god he is so not about doctors.  
  
And yet he finds himself here in Atlanta, three hours before a show, anxiously sitting in the waiting room of what looks suspiciously like a pediatrician's office.  
  
He walks out with a bottle of pills and an offer of testing for depression, which he's pretty sure he doesn't need in order to know if he's got it.  
  
x  
  
Things work out okay until Tony gets another girlfriend. And it's definitely strange, finding someone while on tour as opposed to when they're home. They meet in Texas and sometimes Vic wishes that Tony had worse taste in girls just so it could be easier to hate them. But that's just another feature of Tony, he knows how to pick out all the good people and make the bad ones better.  
  
And even if she's deep down south, she ends up all over their bus, in Tony's phone and his conversation and performance and the smile on his face.  
  
Vic's glad Tony is okay again, he really is, but he kind of wishes he didn't need some chick for that.  
  
x  
  
The words come easier after that, but he still can't get the melody down any better than he can a normal sleep pattern.  
  
x  
  
It's Nevada when he calls the bassist from Oregon for the first time in months. He feels like he's close to crying, but he's been that way a lot lately, with the writer's block and general stress from being surrounded by people and fans 24/7.  
  
It goes to voicemail after a few rings and maybe he does start crying for a minute there, because he really needs to talk to somebody and she hasn't been calling him back and-  
  
"Hey, uh, it's Vic..."  
  
...and I know you haven't been answering my calls, but hey, wanna listen to more of my bullshit problems?  
  
"To send your message, press one at any time. To listen to your message, press two. To re-record, press three. For more options, press four. To cancel, press star."  
  
Beep.  
  
x  
  
He's not really sure when he gives up on the pills, but he thinks it's somewhere near Chicago when Mike finds out that they've only been working because he's been taking four or five at a time. But his little brother's livid face doesn't scare him more than the fear in the tears Mike's trying not to shed.  
  
And he knows he's had problems before, but he just wants his brother to understand that this is different.  
  
"Mike I'm not...I just want to be able to sleep, okay?"  
  
"Is this about Tony?"  
  
"Why does everyone keep fucking asking me if everything is related to Tony?"  
  
"When are you going to stop treating me like I'm stupid?"  
  
And he really didn't need that pulled back up out of their childhood insecurities.  
  
He softens his voice. "Mike, I seriously have no idea what you're talking about."  
  
The look on his face changes, like something registered, but the disappointment is still there when he sighs and walks out of the back room, pill bottle in tow, and slams the door.  
  
x  
  
"IT'S COUNTRY NIGHT BITCHES."  
  
Jaime practically tumbles to the floor, and Vic's not really in the mood for Country Night, but a bottle of Jack Daniels could probably help him get the sleep his self-medicating did the few weeks it lasted.  
  
So he walks around in search of Jack who always seems to be bearing the Jack, which would be ironic if he wasn't sure it was intentional. He finds him in the "kitchen," and pushes Alex into him as a distraction before grabbing a bottle for himself and tearing back to his bunk.  
  
He shuts the door quickly and pops open the bottle, taking the first swig before hearing another voice.  
  
"I know...I miss you too...well then come see me when I get home..."  
  
He's guessing Tony hears the frustrated sigh. The younger boy pulls back the curtains to his bunk, "hey, uh, baby I gotta go, okay?...yeah...yeah, okay, bye."  
  
Vic glares at the floor in front of him and slides down the door, taking another sip of the too-warm liquid.  
  
Tony hops out of his bunk and pushes Vic over slightly to slide down next to him in the narrow hallway against the door, reaching out for the bottle which Vic grudgingly presents him with. And he's thankful for the fact that Tony doesn't ask if he's okay. He doesn't know what's wrong with him and he's getting sick of people asking when he can't answer it himself.  
  
Tony chugs a few sips before handing the bottle back with a disgusted look.  
  
"Do you want to talk, or-"  
  
He cuts the guitarist off with his lips, pulling away quickly and looking straight ahead.  
  
Tony sighs.  
  
"Vic, whatever's going on...is it my fault?"  
  
And he doesn't really know how to answer. He feels like all of his relationships are pretty fucked up right now. He's pretty sure it's just the insomnia, but he wishes he knew what was causing the insomnia in the first place. So he just takes another swig of Jack.  
  
"Vic, please talk to me."  
  
"No! Okay, no. You have another perfect girl and I can't sleep at night. I haven't written shit in months and I don't want to fucking talk about it, because-"  
  
When he turns his head to finish screaming at the other boy, with the intent to get up and leave immediately afterwards, Tony's face calms him down. And at the same time it just makes him angrier, because everything feels so fucked right now, and the look on Tony’s face can take that away, but Tony drinks from the glass bottle again before kissing him on the side of the mouth.  
  
This time Vic reaches when one of them pulls away. He pulls Tony back by the back of the neck, and he knows he shouldn't be doing this, even if his girlfriend is a thousand miles away, but Tony's pushing back and he knows it's just the alcohol. It's the only reason they ever do this, drunken comfort, and somehow that makes it more okay in his head.  
  
Finally turning to face his friend, he slings a leg over Tony's and pushes closer, which earns him a groan on the other boy's part. He licks into Tony's mouth and reaches down to the hem of Tony's jeans, before Jaime is stumbling out from the back lounge, cute brunette girl in tow, and then things kind of freeze. Because the guys have seen them drunkenly kiss, but Tony has Texas now and this is kind of different considering his hand is halfway down the other's unbuttoned pants and he's pretty sure Jaime's staring right at where his knuckles disappear, and he has a moment of "am I ever going to see this dick?" It all seems a bit unfair.  
  
But the girl just giggles after gawking at them for a moment, dragging Jaime behind her as she awkwardly steps around them and out into the main part of the bus.  
  
He lets out a sigh and bangs his forehead into the door, hand still in Tony's pants, and he's thinking that Tony's going to tell him to get off but then he lets out this whine instead and shifts his hips, and Vic smirks into his neck as he sucks.  
  
He pushes at the jeans until they're down Tony's thighs with his boxers and the younger is blushing and trying not to look up at Vic. (The guy can give a blowjob with zero embarrassment, but once his dick’s involved it’s different?) He leans in to bite his bottom lip, and that gets Tony's attention. His hand slides its way slowly down Tony's hip, rounding off and making its way to his dick. And god Vic almost forgot how much he loves touching people.  
  
He's slow, teasing, and "god, Vic, come on, I fucking h-ate you."  
  
"You'd be more convincing without that stutter," he whispers into his friend's ear. And he's found the perfect drunken fuck buddy really, because the moment he finds himself thinking that he could do this forever, and he'd be fine not being touched as long as Tony kept making those noises, he feels fingers fiddling with his zipper, and things pretty much get better from there. Getting off by the hands of someone else combined with those sounds feels like some slice of heaven he hasn't earned.  
  
When Tony’s phone starts vibrating in his pocket, the younger throws the contraption down the hall with his remaining hand, possibly making it into the back lounge, if Vic were to venture a guess.  
  
x  
  
He wakes up half naked, trying to ignore the substance that has his underpants stuck to his body in favor of focusing on why he's on the kitchen counter.  
  
He doesn't realize his hangover until he hears yelling from the back of the bus, first almost stepping on Rian's face on his way down from the counter, and then tripping over Jack and Alex lying in a pile on the floor on his way towards the voice to tell it to shut the fuck up.  
  
"Seriously?! Does it really have to be my unstable brother?!"  
  
If anything, it makes him move faster, wanting to show Mike who's about to be unstable.  
  
"Okay, come on, that's shitty and you know it. You're not so stable yourself."  
  
"And I think you're missing the point, Jaime. All of this? It's going to make things a lot worse. He doesn't need this shit right now."  
  
"Right, because you would know what he needs." He can practically hear Tony's matching headache.  
  
"Yeah, actually I do! I've only been around him my whole life! And I know Naomi doesn't need some cheating excuse for a boy-"  
  
Jaime kicks Mike in the shin the moment Vic opens the door, and his baby brother quickly falls silent.  
  
"Does...someone want to tell me what's going on?"  
  
After a moment, all he receives is a small "not particularly" from Jaime.  
  
"Really? Because everyone here seems to know what's going on with me better than I do, and I'd really love to know."  
  
It's not long before Jaime slinks past them after a painfully guilty-looking Tony (who doesn’t spare Vic so much as a glance), and the Fuentes brothers are left glaring daggers at each other.  
  
"You really don't need to be throwing insults at him you know."  
  
"You mean I shouldn't be honest with my best friend? I just thought maybe he'd want it knocked into his head that he was hurting someone and you'd want it knocked in that you seem to have enough shit without fucking with band dynamics at the same time."  
  
"Well I'm sorry that my happiness fucks things up for you."  
  
And Mike's voice breaks over the single word, "no." He pulls Vic in and wraps himself around him, like he's gone into shock or something. Like he didn't realize the progress Vic's made all these years didn't include the same ego that Mike's managed to build up for his own good. "God, no, no, no, that's not what I meant. That's not what I meant."  
  
He doesn't know if Mike's more upset or if he's just gotten used to how upset he himself usually is.  
  
"I just want to protect you and help and...I'm sorry..."  
  
They end up standing there for a long time, not really knowing what else to say.  
  
"You could use a haircut little bro."  
  
"Yeah, like I'm letting you near me with those clippers again."  
  
x  
  
A few days later, in Utah, everyone goes out to some slightly run-down bar after the show. Vic returns to the bus an hour or so after Tony to find him throwing shit around the back lounge, which isn't exactly new to their bus, but is pretty new to Tony, as far as Vic knows (and Vic does know).  
  
Vic enters cautiously. Like there's a sign above the doorway, "at your own risk." When Tony looks up at him, he freezes. Tony's face goes blank, he stops, like he's malfunctioning. Vic doesn't know it that's comforting or horrifying.  
  
"Uh...hey Tone...what's up?" he maneuvers his feet around a few CDs, and upon closer inspection, it kind of looks like Tony was desperately searching for something rather than committing a drunken act of violence against the four walls. He sees a scratch going up the younger boy's arm, slightly bloody and deeper than a paper cut, wondering if it was put there on purpose or not before catching himself, reminding himself that that's not Tony. That's not Tony, and it's dangerous for his head to go there anyways.  
  
The other boy just looks at him for another moment, stares right through him, over his shoulder and down the road, mapping out the distance to the ocean, the run there, the probability of making it. He looks past Vic for an escape route, but Vic wishes he could just let him be one. He scares himself out of his daze when he finds himself considering offering to get them to the airport, to get them to the nearest shoreline, fucking away, fucking anywhere Tony wants to go, because that would be okay. (Why would that be okay?)  
  
"Please go away," such a small voice from a tall boy that was just demolishing their bus.  
  
"I-"  
  
"Vic just go, okay! You've done enough, and nothing good comes of us, so just g-leave me the fuck alone!"  
  
They stand in silence, Vic unwilling to deny anything, and Tony unwilling to apologize. Both unwilling to look at each other.  
  
"I'm not going anywhere."  
  
Tony scoffs, throws his arms up before letting them tangle across his chest, looks up and through the back of Vic's head. "What do you want from me?"  
  
It's the most bitter Tony's ever sounded, at least around him. It's begging and defeated and so over everything.  
  
"I want you to talk to me," he pleads right back.  
  
It takes a while. Much more screaming, more objects being pulled out of Tony's bag and destroyed, in search or in anger or something Vic cannot channel, but then it comes out. The old girlfriend, the one that dated him for three years, from back when the band started.  
  
"She's..."  
  
He doesn't need more than that, not with the look that Tony's giving him, he doesn't expect him to say it.  
  
"It's my fault."  
  
"Tone. No. Are you out of your fucking mind?!"  
  
A book flies by. Another CD. A shoe.  
  
"It is! It fucking is! She..." he sighs, tries (fails) to lower his voice, "she called me that night you know. Three times! But I was talking to Naomi, and then you came in and...and now she's..."  
  
Tony's pacing so intensely that he's sure he'll wear a hole in the bus pretty soon, hands in his hair when they're not digging for something that isn't there anymore, not throwing something that's been gone a long time. (A hat. An ipod. Another shoe.)  
  
Vic moves in closer, "To-"  
  
"Vic, just fucking go! I don't want to talk! I don't want you to write me into some fucking sad song telling me I didn't do it, because I did, and I don't want you to use that bullshit calming voice on me when I'm screaming my fucking lungs out at you! I don't want that sympathy look because I don't fucking deserve it, so if you're going to sit there and tell me that I'm wrong for blaming myself then get the fuck out!"  
  
"You picking up that phone wouldn't have saved her!" he matches Tony's volume.  
  
He doesn't know what happens after that, isn't sure when throwing and pacing and screaming turns into panicking and stiffening and silence, but it does. And the silence is so much worse, leaves him wondering. He can see it in all of the other boy, in Tony's fingertips as clearly as his irises, and sometimes Vic remembers that he will never understand. Vic can comprehend turmoil. Fuck, he can summon it without trying, can harbor it unintentionally. Constantly. But he will never understand that blank stare, or what made Tony this way, or what "this way" even is. He won't know what's empowering about an element that tried to choke the air out of you, or comprehend a panic attack, see where Tony's self-esteem was whisked away to before it was pushed through his ears and held in tight until fully absorbed. And most of all, despite Vic's past, he will never understand why Tony punishes himself the ways he does, cradled deep back in his head, unmoving, unsaid, and deeply guilty.  
  
He won't let that guilt go, but Vic wishes he could.  
  
He walks over to Tony, faster, pulls his fingers out of his hair, threads them through his fingers ("hold as tight as you want"). "Do you want me to go?"  
  
It depends on the panic attack, and he doesn't pretend to try to get it. Some days, he'll crawl into his bunk alone, some he'll ask for someone else, and some he'll cling to Vic, never moving.  
  
After a moment of shallow inhales, Tony shakes his head, squeezes harder, no. He has trouble talking, as Vic imagines one would while being unable to breathe or think. Vic pulls him over to a corner that isn't littered with debris, sitting in the corner himself and pulling Tony down next to him. (You can move, you can get out whenever you need to, look at how big the room is from here, my hands, not the hair, not the hair, don't hurt yourself, I love you.)  
  
Tony tries to put his hands back in his hair, he always does, the one comfort Vic won't give him at times like these. (He tried to stop it from the beginning, but the time he saw Tony pull out a chunk, like an actual chunk that you could see missing from his scalp if you moved a couple strands around, is when he was pretty determined to put an end to it.) Sometimes his nails dig so deep into Vic's hands that he bleeds, so deep that Vic winces and Tony legitimately cries because he feels so bad, but Vic just keeps telling him that it's better, that it's shared pain instead of another thing that Tony can lock away from the world. "It's okay."  
  
This is one of those occasions, one where Tony's anxiety transitions into crying and he just keeps apologizing, for the girl he loved or Vic's hands he isn't sure.  
  
They're facing each other in the corner of the empty bus, legs crossed, hand in hand, and broken belongings scattered around the floor when Tony leans his head forward to cry all over Vic's shoulder. He pulls their hands up to kiss the crescent shaped wounds right under Vic's knuckles, still whispering apologies. "I'm sorry," kiss, "I'm sorry," kiss.  
  
He eventually lets go of the guitarist's right hand to smooth his hair out of his face and pull him closer. Tony just pulls them sideways, towards his bunk, emotionally exhausted. When he tries to pull Vic down, Vic pulls away, smiles sympathetically, brushes his hair away to kiss his cheek, before gesturing to the slightly destroyed room. Tony tries to get up to help but is pushed back down.  
  
Vic throws most of the things back into the duffle in the extra bunk while he listens to his friend sniffle across the small aisle. When he finishes, he finds what he's guessing Tony was looking for right under his bag, the last letter she wrote him, seemingly happy, eerily dated exactly a month prior. Vic thinks he'd probably have searched for signs he should've caught and wouldn't have found anyways. He shoves the letter into the front pocket, heading to the kitchen, and returning with water. He hands the plastic cup to an unresponsive Tony, who he sighs at. He reaches out to touch his shoulder before the boy takes the water, downs it, drops the cup next to his bed.  
  
He turns around to turn out the light and is headed to his own bunk when he feels a tug on the hem of his shirt, like a kid. He wonders if Tony will always just be a kid, and slides into the bunk next to him, feeling a pair of arms wrap around his waist, and he runs his fingernails up and down Tony's upper arms, feather light and caring as a touch can be. He falls asleep there, Tony's wet face tucked into his neck and breathing still not quite even, like a lullaby singing him to sleep. And if there's one thing he wishes he could take from the other, it's his guilt complex.  
  
x  
  
Tony doesn't talk as much, no matter how much Mike apologizes. He calls Texas and tells her and she basically just tells him to calm down. He's twenty four. He's got girl hair and he's in a band that never stops touring, and that she expected worse. Vic doesn't think that helps too much.  
  
He runs off in Iowa, of all places, only finding a pond in place of the body of water he's looking for. Sometimes Vic thinks he'd walk to the ocean if nobody ever went after him, that maybe he'd sink in and develop gills or drown. It's hard to say which would come first with his determination.  
  
He walks Tony back to the venue just in time, the other boy all hazy eyes and words that sound too far away. He looks like he's drowning that whole show, and it's strange when he always seems to be floating.  
  
He's worried that he's ruined it for Tony. Because he seemed so happy again and now...maybe he should just stay away from him.  
  
x  
  
That thought process was never bound to last long.  
  
x  
  
They spend seven months off tour working on getting this fucking album out of their heads and onto a record. His struggles can be summed up in half a gigabyte.  
  
They must get a thousand letters. Vic can't help but hoard them. They bring out the words he still doesn't understand completely.  
  
He feels like he's going to explode from sitting in the same spot for so long by the time they're leaving for tour again.  
  
x  
  
Tony and Texas break up due to eventual lack of interest and Vic starts sleeping again.  
  
He calls the bassist from Oregon once a week.  
  
He doesn't get a response.  
  
x  
  
They tour with Sleeping With Sirens and things just seem to keep growing and growing until they're sold out in New York City and he can't even hear Kellin screaming his half of the lyrics over the fans.  
  
He feels Kellin lift him up and he lets out this embarrassing squeak into the microphone and everyone cheers more but he can feel his cheeks blazing under the amused look Tony's giving him from his corner of the stage.  
  
By the time their set's over and Sleeping With Sirens are walking out, he's being shoved into a wall and there's a tongue being forced into his mouth. And he really hopes people can't hear him over the music, because then his hands are being held over his head and that is doing things he never really thought it would do for him.  
  
"Oh my-, fuck, Tony."  
  
Tony lets out a low laugh, grinding Vic's hips back into the bricks, and is repaid with a high-pitched whine. And then suddenly he's gone, walking away, smirking back at Vic, and he thinks he might scream. But then Mike's yelling at him to come talk to fans and he's never really hated his life as a musician until this moment.  
  
He groans loudly and stomps outside after the rest of his band, mentally noting that he will get payback later.  
  
x  
  
"Hey, uh..."  
  
He looks up on their first night off on this tour to see Tony in the doorway of his and Mike's hotel room holding up the clippers. They silently walk to the hotel bathroom, Vic dragging a chair behind him, and Tony leans his head to the left and back, because he knows it's where Vic starts.  
  
He smiles down at him, runs his fingers through his hair.  
  
He goes slow, slower than usual. Tony hums softer, and Vic runs his fingers through the boy's hair until there's a thin layer of grease showing.  
  
After it's all trimmed again, Vic sits down on Tony's thighs, leans his head into his neck, and waits for Tony to cross his arms around his torso. He sees Tony smile in the mirror, but he isn't looking at his new haircut.  
  
x  
  
The first time he remembers seeing this look from the other half of the band is in Kansas City. They're all sitting on the bus watching another movie, Vic all tucked into Tony, and he looks up after hearing a very faint snort from the kitchen. He looks up to see Mike making food, and Jaime quickly averting his eyes from Vic's, both wearing smug faces.  
  
He doesn't pay it much mind, goes back to the movie, but when he looks up again, they're sniggering to each other, whispering, and he'd really like to know what they were saying that's got Tony blushing.  
  
He feels like everyone's been in on some joke except for him the past year.  
  
"What're you laughing about?"  
  
Tony's cheeks redden further as Mike looks up from the (giant) sandwich he's making.  
  
"What? Nothing?" It'd be more convincing if Jaime weren't trying to hold back a laugh.  
  
"Am I missing something here?"  
  
"Oh yeah," Jaime manages to get out, "you're definitely missing something."  
  
He opens his mouth, but not before Tony's glaring straight ahead and turning up the volume 100%.  
  
x  
  
It happens in Milwaukee.  
  
They've started doing acoustic shows in the past few cities, sitting around with fans after concerts, and he alternates playing with Tony and Jaime while Mike hangs around with the other, talking to kids. They've been playing the more obscure, softer songs off of their albums.  
  
It happens in the middle of a song, in the dim light of the parking lot, November cold creeping into his bones and hair still drying out from all the sweating on stage a few hours prior. Sleeping's bus is still parked next to theirs, indicating that they're still around here somewhere, and their own crew has disappeared back onto the bus. There are maybe twenty kids still around, and the few bars and gas stations surrounding the venue have mostly closed down. He hears Tony humming faintly through the chords (call it trained ears) and he's looking over his way in an attempt to keep an eye on Mike when his eyes land on Tony's, which instantly flicker away, and he almost chokes on the words, almost stumbles over the notes.  
  
I don't know how you got into me, down my throat, and made a home in my veins.  
  
That's when it happens, whatever “it” is, and it's preposterous that a crush could inspire something as big as this. It's ridiculous, fucking insane, but he doesn't really know how to deny it to himself at this point.  
  
So instead he regains himself, he strives to remember the lyrics, he keeps singing, trying not to look over at the beautiful boy to his left in the midnight parking lot, trying not to realize the meaning behind that look that Tony gives slips of paper, gives people that kiss first and boys he blows in basement bathrooms, gives him. He spends the night trying to push it off until later, holding himself back, hearing his own words flow from someone else’s throat, and completely incapable of focus.  
  
After the last song, he tries to close things off fast, talks to as few fans as possible, and grabs Tony by the wrist, ignoring Jaime’s raised eyebrow. He's so fucking past what anyone is thinking right now. And a moment later, Vic feels like he’s watching himself push through the back door of the venue and down a long abandoned hallway, turning right at the end into what appears to be an empty dressing room. He doesn’t hear anything Tony’s saying until the door clicks shut and Tony’s pulling his arm away with a “what the fuck, Vic?”  
  
And he just looks up at the younger boy, like he’s lost the ability to speak, like nothing’s registering in his head. But he spends a minute just giving Tony this fucking look, one that he’s sure resembles the one Tony’s been giving him the past five and a half years before giving up on whatever mind-reading ability he was hoping to elicit from the other, instead settling for shoving him into the door and getting up to his tiptoes to kiss him, just like he always does. But Tony pulls away, giving Vic a confused glance, "seriously Vic, what's up with you?"  
  
All he can really do is stand there. He feels like an idiot, doesn't know how to explain himself. He just wants Tony to understand somehow, but he doesn't know how to put any of this into words. It’s funny, he spent months upon months writing an entire album about it, but now it’s like he’s suddenly run out of comprehensive things to say. He’s just left with the confusing, ugly pieces that didn’t fit in anywhere. He looks up at him again, the taller still wearing a worried expression, and he feels like he's drowning, but he guesses maybe that's what it's supposed to feel like, before correcting himself. That's just what Tony feels like.  
  
"I just...you...it's all about you."  
  
Tony starts laughing at him, of all things. "What the hell are you talking about? Were you drinking before the show again?"  
  
"No! Fuck you! It...Selfish Machines, it's..." he looks down at his feet, hands still in Tony's shirt as he sighs, "It's about you."  
  
When he looks up as subtly as he can manage, Tony's staring down at his feet, where Vic was just looking, small smile spread across his face, like he already knew.  
  
"Why didn't anyone tell me?"  
  
He hears the other snort. "Tell you your own feelings? That'd have gone down well." He has a point.  
  
Tony looks up, smirk in its place, and pulls Vic forward by the belt loops. He hears himself let out a surprised squeak, and Tony leans into his lips instead of addressing it. And this is kind of different; this is a different kind of desperation, not fixed nor done away with by the hips pushing against his, he can feel it from the start. Tony pushes him into the room, farther and farther until his legs hit the arm of the couch and he falls backwards, legs apart and elbows holding him up. And the way that Tony bites his lip staring down at him makes him blush and his cock actually fucking twitches. He almost moans.  
  
He shuffles up the couch to make room for his friend, and Tony settles between his knees, eyes not leaving the exposed skin where Vic's shirt is riding up.  
  
Tony leans down to kiss him, biting just on the right side of hard, his tongue making its way into Vic's mouth when he gasps. They tangle together; suck, bite, lick. And these are the “ugly” parts, the parts that didn’t make the album because he couldn’t fathom putting them into words. They would never be beautiful enough, but that was sort of fucking incredible that, as a lyricist, he couldn’t find pretty words for something. Then Vic's back is arching and he's pushing up into Tony, and he never expected to be all that into guys, but the way that his guitarist pushes him down in all the best ways, the feel of how hard he is just makes Vic whimper, makes him want to cry because it feels really fucking good in a much different way than girls do. Maybe not better or worse, but so different.  
  
Tony's moaning into his neck and he feels like he could just come from this, like a fucking teenager, but he wants so much more, and he pushes on Tony's shoulders, "wait, wait, wait," he whispers it in quick succession, trying to catch his breath, as if someone will hear them, "I want..."  
  
Tony just looks down expectantly, upset, as he guesses he would be if the tables were turned, and Vic tries to come up with the best words before quickly realizing that there is no delicate way to tell one of your best friends that you want to have full-on gay sex with them right now in this deserted venue that they aren't even supposed to be in at the moment. So instead, he just pulls Tony forward by his shirt, kissing him again, and leaning his head to the side to mumble into his ear. "Fuck me."  
  
He's met with a response he should've expected from Tony, "What? How?!"  
  
Vic drops his head back against the arm of the couch. "Are you shitting me? You...well, you...-"  
  
Tony hits him in the shoulder, "no, you asshole! I mean I don't have anything to...I mean I have this," he reaches into his front pocket to pull out a condom, "but I don't think that's gonna cut it man."  
  
That's all the incentive Vic really needs to stand up and start checking his pockets, as if a bottle of lube he never purchased will miraculously emerge from his unreasonably tight jeans, and then he remembers where they are, and he's running off to the attached bathroom, way too hopeful, looking for fucking anything. He's digging through the small cupboard, getting ready to run to the Walgreens a block down because he wants this that much right now when he sees it. Lotion. He holds it up as if he's found the holy grail (and he may as well, water-based and unscented. Perhaps this has happened before.), before running back out to the dressing room to find a defeated looking Tony lying face down on the couch where Vic crawled out from beneath him, obviously not having as much faith in his success.  
  
Vic sits on him, grinds down, and Tony groans beneath him, turning around so Vic's straddling his hips. He holds up his prize and smirks down at the mohawked boy, dropping the bottle into his hands.  
  
Tony drops it on the floor next to them and manages to flip them both over before he's tugging Vic's shirt off and leaning down to bite one of his nipples before Vic can manage to return the favor. He licks down to Vic's waistband before Vic can get his shirt off, and then he's headed for the button on the singer's jeans, unbuttoning them with his fucking teeth, and that's just not fair because Vic isn't going to last long at all if things keep going the way they are.  
  
The younger pulls Vic's boxers off with his pants, which may not have been the intent, but is the easily predictable outcome based on how form-fitting he likes his skinny jeans.  
  
Tony's back in between his legs in no time, and he leans down to kiss down his stomach again before reaching his cock, goddamn kissing the head, never breaking eye contact, the cheeky bastard. When he does, he's pulling Vic into his mouth without warning, tongue gliding up and down one of the bigger veins, and Jesus, he forgot about this.  
  
"Fucking Christ, where did you learn this shit?"  
  
Tony laughs around his cock (as much as one can), and Vic has to push him away, whining, before he ruins this whole plan.  
  
He practically tears the remainder of Tony's clothes off before sitting up and pushing the other back, sitting between his knees on the floor in front of him, and Tony is blushing like mad. Vic's pretty sure he can hear his heartbeat from here, and he licks right into the slit, finally. And Tony's quiet moans sound better than any of the guitar riffs either of them has composed on any of their albums. He puts his mouth around the head of Tony's cock and sucks, all the more self-conscious because he's never done this before, but the thing about blowjobs is that even when they're not very good they're still pretty awesome.  
  
It's okay, he guesses, nothing to write home about, not that eating girls out is all that incredible either. He mostly does it for the sounds they make, and Tony isn't disappointing on that front, but there's something about handjobs (which he's given a few more of than his zero blowjobs) and fingering that does it for him. Sitting there and kissing them, swallow their moans, and seeing their face, significantly closer to the show, and next to his own orgasms, there’s not much better than that.  
  
He's pushing his head up and down his friend, taking in a little more each time, and he isn't sure if he's doing a decent job or if Tony's just getting impatient when he pulls him back up to the couch, pushes him down, grabs for the lotion.  
  
He watches nervously as the other opens the cap and squirts a decent amount of the smooth substance out onto his fingers. But Tony's fingers are already against him when he's asking "are you sure about this?"  
  
Vic looks at him like he's stupid for a second before moaning at the circling motions Tony's making around him, nodding enthusiastically. "God, I'm so fucking sure."  
  
Tony bites his lip again, "Okay, but..." and he almost seems more nervous about the whole thing than Vic, "just...you have to tell me if you wanna stop, okay?"  
  
Vic just nods again before pushing down closer to Tony's index finger, "Shit, I will, okay? Just, fucking please..."  
  
That smug look returns to Tony's face as he's slowly pushing his finger in up to the knuckle, and it doesn't exactly hurt, but it is kind of strange. And he's kind of disappointed that it doesn't seem to do anything for him when Tony starts moving it around, pulling and pushing and wiggling. It all just feels kind of weird, and he can tell that the other’s trying to change the angles, find something, but maybe Vic just doesn’t have it.  
  
Moments after that thought, Tony's pushing a second finger against the first. And okay, that one hurts a little. Maybe a little more than a little.  
  
He silently winces for a moment while the younger reaches down to kiss his neck, and it must change the angle the right way because then Vic feels something inside of him, something really good that makes his back arch and he's moaning, " Tone, again. There. Again."  
  
It takes a few tries, but the other finds it and manages to keep track of it relatively well.  
  
There is no way to deny feeling him add another digit, but it's more of the good overriding the bad that keeps him going. Tony leans down to kiss him, but he feels like he can't kiss back because this is so new and so goddamn distracting. And it's really weird, experiencing this the other way around when he's done this to girls so many times. He wonders if they feel like this.  
  
When Tony pulls his fingers out, Vic feels like he actually stops thinking for a moment. He just wants more of it and almost asks what happened before he remembers oh yeah, about to get more.  
  
He more hears Tony putting on the condom than anything, can't really pay attention because he's just a writhing mess. Why the hell didn't he try out boys earlier? He'd really like to have a conference with his past self. He thinks the past half of a decade would’ve been a lot more interesting.  
  
Tony's looking up at him for confirmation, and he whines and nods as Tony rubs his dick up and down, cool lotion spreading around him before pushing himself in, and that really hurts, really really hurts. He lets out a noise almost like a sob and Tony leans his forehead against Vic's.  
  
"Do you want me to stop?" The boy’s self-control is pretty incredible. He's fucking halfway in, Vic can feel him shaking uncontrollably, and he's offering to stop. He doesn't know if he'd be able to do the same.  
  
Tony's putting all of his effort into not moving, a factor visible in his eyebrows, in his tight lips and shaking, and Vic's eyebrows are knit together themselves, tight as possible as the other kisses his eyes, kisses down his face, over his ears and his forehead. And damn it, he's made it this far, he isn't turning back now. "No. No, keep going."  
  
Tony sighs, probably in relief. "Okay, you gotta relax though, or else this isn't gonna last very long." Tony lets out a small laugh, and Vic's trying to relax, he is, but fuck.  
  
The guitarist is pushing all the way in before Vic has to confirm that he's okay again. He pushes his head into Vic's again, nuzzles into Vic's neck, and he's pulling out and pushing back in. It's not quite as bad this time, and he can feel him searching for that spot again as Vic relaxes his legs, gets used to the stretch. When he finds it again, it's arguably better. Something about the hit of the nerves with the stretching as a secondary sensation makes the former that much better.  
  
It takes Vic until this moment to look up at Tony, to hear his always quiet moans and the occasional whine, and he's just staring down at Vic, watching him, and something about that turns him on more.  
  
Tony keeps pushing into him at just the correct pressure, hitting those nerves inside him more often than not, and Vic's trying to hold out as long as humanly possible because this is one of the most amazing views he's ever had. His legs almost wrap around him, sort of half-hearted up by Tony's hips, of their own accord, and Vic's making noises he didn't know he even could. Tony's breathing into his neck, still kissing him, still trying to be closer, closer, closer when he's already inside of him, and he's always had a whole different level of appreciation for people who can be adorable while fucking you.  
  
Their breathing is becoming more uneven and Vic is wondering if he could just come from this, without being touched, but then Tony's reaching down his stomach and he immediately throws that thought out the window in favor of yes. He's out in about two strokes, Tony's hand squeezing the tiniest bit at the tip the way it always does, and then Vic's coming on both of their stomachs and trying not to be loud in fear that someone's come looking for them. About fifteen seconds later, Tony's whispering his name, and god, he could probably get hard again just from that if he hadn't come as hard as he just did, and then the younger lets out this low moan that's almost a growl and he's gone.  
  
He looks up at Vic, lean in to kiss him again, and pulls out, earning himself a whine.  
  
He pushes at Vic until they're facing each other side by side on the couch, barely managing to keep from falling off, off of the couch and off of wherever this relationship’s been standing since Vic straightened his hair every day and Tony was a kid, the former smiling uncontrollably.  
  
x  
  
It isn’t until a week later that Vic gets a call from Portland, leaving him a five-and-a-half-minute long voicemail about the bassist on the other line losing all the numbers and information in her phone (recently passed down by her drummer), losing the actual phone, going through hell to get all the numbers back, and very quickly after that, recovering the phone itself (“What kind of bullshit is the universe giving me?”).  
  
“You should be comforted by the fact that you are probably the most difficult man to get in touch with, Fuentes.”  
  
He can hear the laugh in her voice when she talks about the boy from one of her shows years ago, and the honesty when she says she’ll be in San Diego soon.  
  
“And by the way, I got quite the suggestive message when I found this phone again. Sounded like two dudes going at it, but it was kind of muffled by like a pocket or s-“  
  
Vic takes his cell off speaker immediately, shoving it into his pocket, avoiding eye contact with the rest of the guys sitting around the bus with him.  
  
Tony hides his red face and walks off the bus.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Omg, I’m so sorry to anyone who read this and suffered through that sex scene. I’m sorry that you had to resort to this due to lack of fics for this pairing, believe me, I understand completely. Go easy on me!


End file.
